Talk:John Maynard Smith

Infobox Discussion
The infobox on the John Maynard Smith page has been removed. Please discuss arguments for or against removal to reach a consensus. To remind you what it looked like, here is a sample:

bunix 09:16, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a really incompetent implementation of a box; See talk:J. B. S. Haldane. Why oh why oh why does it matter whether he was right or left handed? (etc). &mdash; Dunc|&#9786; 09:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Dunc, I am interested to hear which things in particular are not implemented correctly. Please let us know and it can be fixed. No problem. Discussion on handedness is now at talk:J. B. S. Haldane. Best regards, bunix 12:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Dunc, OK two weeks have passed to give us a chance to sleep on it. In the absence of any futher objections, I am now reinstating the box. In order to respect your comments, I have commented out the chirality field. Best regards, bunix 13:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Doctoral Advisor
Really! John Maynard Smith never got a PhD. He was an undergrad at UCL with JBS Haldane, but if my memory is correct, then spent his war years in aircraft design. I think everyone, especially JMS, knew he was brilliant, so he simply didn't need a PhD, which was an American invention borrowed from Germany before the holocaust. Someone more clued up than me should research his biography more thoroughly, and let me know the title of his PhD dissertation/thesis. I don't think he did one at all. Eratosignis (talk) 21:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * - that is correct, he went straight from being a doctoral student to a full professor. You are right about needing more research though - the Darwin-Wallace Medal (needlessly piped to Darwin-Wallace Award for reasons unknown) was awarded posthumously - but not uniquely so. Barney the barney barney (talk) 13:40, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually he didn't go from student to full professor. Between Haldane and Sussex, he was a lecturer in the Zoology Dept at UCL when Peter Medawar was head of department. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:54, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Contributions to Humanity
Several of the awards he received required that the recipients (scientific) efforts contribute to the well-being of humanity. It would be nice if the article expounded on his philanthropy and contributions to humanity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.187.0.164 (talk) 17:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Game theory vs. Darwin
As far as I understand the famous biologist Ernst Mayr does not regard Richard Dawkins and Maynard Smith as a Darwinists. If this view has its reasons, it should be discussed. There is even a Wikipedia: Dawkins vs. Gould presenting the Book: Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest is a book by philosopher of biology Kim Sterelny about the differing views of biologists Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. The article about Maynard Smith should reflect the essentials of this debate.Cuauti (talk) 21:58, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I attach the view of Ernst Mayr: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mayr/mayr_index.html MAYR: Yet the funny thing is if in England, you ask a man in the street who the greatest living Darwinian is, he will say Richard Dawkins. And indeed, Dawkins has done a marvelous job of popularizing Darwinism. But Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian. I would not call him the greatest Darwinian. Not even Maynard Smith. Maynard Smith was raised in math and physics, and he was an airplane engineer in the last war. For the most part, he still thinks like a mathematician and engineer. His most successful contribution to evolutionary biology has been applying so-called game theory to evolution. Personally I have — and now I perhaps expose myself to a great deal of criticism, but regardless — I have always been a little unhappy about that application of game theory. What animal ever, in a confrontation, would say, now let me figure it out, would it be better to be timid or would it be better to be bold? That's not the way organisms think. You get — and somebody would have to work this out since I'm not a mathematician — exactly the same result if you have a population with every animal acting with a different mixture of timidity and boldness. Individuals at one end of the curve are very timid and have little boldness, individuals in the middle of the curve have an appropriate mixture of timidity and boldness, and individuals at the other end of the curve are very bold. Somewhere in between, in a given environment with a given set of enemies and competitors, is the best mixture of the two tendencies. You get the same results with game theory, but in my opinion, the better solution has a much more biological, Darwinian approach. Cuauti (talk) 21:58, 27 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Well I knew John fairly well, and he was a genuine biologist so far as I was concerned. His idea drew upon his background, but were biological in essence. Ernst I only corresponded with. He may have had a tendency to overstate (!) It's difficult to judge Dawkins at present. The less we judge, the better science is. Historically, many biologists have been misjudged by their contemporaries. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:41, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

More refs
In case I (or someone else) feel like fixing up this article, here are some additional references:



Anyway, I'll be looking at giving this article proper treatment sometime in the future. I'm not sure when, though... –  VisionHolder « talk » 08:56, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
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Name barrelled?
What basis is there for saying his name was double-barrelled? His father was Sidney Maynard Smith, but Sidney's father was one W H Smith. Socialambulator (talk) 17:05, 6 May 2024 (UTC)